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ThinkUp is a free social monitoring tool that just hopped out of beta. The open source app enables you to monitor, extract, archive and analyze your activities on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. It is great to be able to do this in a single place without charge. The fact that the tool runs on your own web server makes it really awesome. You get full control over your own data but also the responsibility to make and keep that data safe.

We have all gotten used to the fact that Twitter (for example) is a fast but also a fleeting game. Now this no longer has to be the case. With ThinkUp you have the means to store all your tweets and the retweets you get permanently and in your own database.

Decide for yourself if an app like this makes sense for the regular one-man-show (or one-woman-show) in the web or any other type of business.

It certainly does make sense for small to medium businesses. Whenever the social media accounts are maintained by more than one person this tool gains you a lot of transparency and control. If you need to report your activities and successes ThinkUp is a must have.

You can play with a live demo of ThinkUp and get insights about @whitehouse on Twitter and/or the White House Facebook Page.